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1.1 Brancusi’s studio. Reconstruction at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre
Georges Pompidou, by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. 1992–96.
PA R T O N E
Introduction
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CHAPTER ONE
LIVING
WITH ART
O
ur simplest words are often the deepest in meaning: birth, kiss,
flight, dream. The sculptor Constantin Brancusi spent his life
searching for forms as simple and pure as those words—forms that
seem to have existed forever, outside of time. Born a peasant in a remote village in Romania, he spent most of his adult life in Paris, where he
lived in a single small room adjoining a skylit studio. Upon his death in 1957,
Brancusi willed the contents of his studio to the French government, which
eventually re-created the studio itself in a museum (1.1).
Near the center of the photograph are two versions of an idea Brancusi
called Endless Column. Pulsing upward with great energy, the columns seem
as though they could go on forever. Perhaps they do go on forever, and we can
see only part of them. Directly in front of the white column, a sleek, horizontal marble form looking something like a slender submarine seems to hover
over a disk-shaped base. Brancusi called it simply Fish. It does not depict any
particular fish, but rather shows us the idea of something that moves swiftly
and freely through the water, the essence of a fish. To the left of the dark column, arching up in front of a patch of wall painted red, is a version of one of
Brancusi’s most famous works, Bird in Space. Here again the artist portrays
not a particular bird, but rather the idea of flight, the feeling of soaring upward. Brancusi said that the work represents “the soul liberated from matter.”1
A photograph by Brancusi shows another, more mysterious view of Bird
in Space (1.2). Light from a source we cannot see cuts across the work and
falls in a sharp diamond shape on the wall behind. The sculpture casts a
shadow so strong it seems to have a dark twin. Before it lies a broken, discarded work. The photograph might make you think of the birth of a bird
from its shell, or of a perfected work of art arising from numerous failed attempts, or indeed of a soul newly liberated from its material prison.
Brancusi took many photographs of his work, and through them we can
see how his sculptures lived in his imagination even after they were finished.
He photographed them in varying conditions of light, in multiple locations
and combinations, from close up and far away. With each photograph they
seem to reveal a different mood, the way people we know reveal different sides
of themselves over time.
1.2 Constantin Brancusi. Bird in
Space. c. 1928–30. Gelatin silver
print, 113⁄4 93⁄8".
Musée National d’Art Moderne,
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
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Living with art, Brancusi’s photographs show us, is making art live by letting it engage our attention, our imagination, our intelligence. Few of us, of
course, can live with art the way Brancusi did. Yet we can choose to seek out
encounters with art, to make it a matter for thought and enjoyment, and to let
it live in our imagination.
You probably live already with more art than you think you do. Very
likely the walls of your home are decorated with posters, photographs, or even
paintings you chose because you find them beautiful or meaningful. Walking
around your community you probably pass by buildings that were designed
for visual appeal as well as to serve practical ends. If you ever pause for a moment just to look at one of them, to take pleasure, for example, in its silhouette against the sky, you have made the architect’s work live for a moment by
appreciating an effect that he or she prepared for you. We call such an experience an aesthetic experience. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the feelings aroused in us by sensory experiences—experiences we
have through sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Aesthetics concerns itself
with our responses to the natural world and to the world we make, especially
the world of art. What art is, how and why it affects us—these are some of the
issues that aesthetics addresses.
This book hopes to deepen your pleasure in the aesthetic experience by
broadening your understanding of one of the most basic and universal of human activities, making art. Its subject is visual art, which is art that addresses
the sense of sight, as opposed to music or poetry, which are arts that appeal to
the ear. It focuses on the Western tradition, by which we mean art as it has
been understood and practiced in Europe and in cultures with their roots in
European thought, such as the United States. But it also reaches back to consider works created well before Western ideas about art were in place and
across to other cultures that have very different traditions of art.
THE IMPULSE FOR ART
No society that we know of, for as far back in human history as we have been
able to penetrate, has lived without some form of art. The impulse to make
and respond to art appears to be as deeply ingrained in us as the ability to
learn language, part of what sets us apart as humans. Where does the urge to
make art come from? What purposes does it serve? For answers, we might begin by looking at some of the oldest works yet discovered, images and artifacts
dating from the Stone Ages, near the beginning of the human experience.
On the afternoon of December 18, 1994, two men and a woman, all experienced cave explorers, were climbing among the rocky cliffs in the Ardèche region of southeastern France. From a small cavity in the rock they felt a draft of
air, which they knew often signaled a large cavern within. After clearing away
some rocks and debris, they were able to squeeze through a narrow channel
into what appeared to be an enormous underground room, its floor littered
with animal bones. Pressing farther into the cave, the explorers played their
lights on the walls and made an astonishing discovery: The walls were covered
with drawings and paintings (1.3)—more than three hundred images as they
eventually found—depicting rhinoceroses, horses, bears, reindeer, lions, bison,
mammoths, and others, as well as numerous outlines of human hands.
It was evident that the paintings were extremely old and that the cave
had remained untouched, unseen by humans, since prehistoric times. The explorers agreed to name the site after the one in their number who had led
them to it, Jean-Marie Chauvet, so it is called the Chauvet cave. What they did
not realize until months later, after radiocarbon testing had accurately dated
the paintings, was that they had just pushed back the history of art by several
thousand years. The Chauvet images were made about 30,000 B.C.E. and are
the oldest paintings we know. The paintings date from a time known as the
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Upper Paleolithic Period, which simply means the latter part of the Old Stone
Age. Archaeologists have formed some tentative conclusions about how the
paintings were done. Pigments of red and yellow ochre, a natural earth substance, along with black charcoal, could have been mixed with animal fat and
painted onto the walls with a reed brush. In powdered form, the same materials probably were mouth-blown onto the surface through hollow reeds.
Many of the images are engraved, or scratched, into the rock.
More intriguing is the question of why the cave paintings were made,
why their creators paid such meticulous attention to detail, why they did their
work so far underground. The paintings clearly were not meant to embellish
a dwelling space. The cave artists must have lived—slept, cooked their meals,
mated, and raised their children—much nearer to the mouths of these caves,
close to daylight and fresh air. Until the Chauvet cave was discovered, many
experts believed that ancient cave paintings were done for magical assistance
in the hunt, to ensure success in bringing down game animals. But several of
the animals depicted at Chauvet, including lions and rhinos and bears, were
not in the customary diet of early peoples. Perhaps the artists wished to establish some kind of connection with these wild beasts, but we cannot know
for sure.
As fascinating as these mysteries are, they pass over perhaps the most
amazing thing of all, which is that there should be images in the first place.
The ability to make images is uniquely human. We do it so naturally and so
constantly that we take it for granted. We make them with our hands, and we
make them with our minds. Lying out on the grass, for example, you may
amuse yourself by finding images in the shifting clouds, now a lion, now an
old woman. Are the images really there? We know that a cloud is just a cloud,
yet the image is certainly there, because we see it. Our experience of the images we make is the same. We know that a drawing is just markings on a surface, a newspaper photograph merely dots, yet we recognize them as images
that reflect our world, and we identify with them. The experience was the
same for Paleolithic image-makers as it is for us. All images may not be art,
but our ability to make them is one place where art begins.
1.3 Left section of the “Lion
Panel,” Chauvet cave, Ardèche
Valley, France. c. 30,000 B.C.E.
T H E I M P U L S E F O R A RT •
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1.4 (above, top) Stonehenge. c.
2000–1500 B.C.E. Height of stones,
13'6". Salisbury Plain, England.
1.5 (above) Stemmed vessel,
from Weifang, Shandong, China.
Neolithic period, Longshan
culture, c. 2000 B.C.E. Black
pottery, thin biscuit; height 101⁄2".
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The contemporary British sculptor Anthony Caro has said that “all art is
basically Paleolithic or Neolithic: either the urge to smear soot and grease on
cave walls or pile stone on stone.”2 By “soot and grease” Caro means the cave
paintings. With “the urge to pile stone on stone” he has in mind one of the
most impressive and haunting works to survive from the Stone Ages, the structure in the south of England known as Stonehenge (1.4). Today much ruined
through time and vandalism, Stonehenge at its height consisted of several
concentric circles of megaliths, very large stones, surrounded in turn by a circular ditch. It was built in several phases over many centuries, beginning
around 3100 B.C.E. The tallest circle, visible in the photograph here, originally
consisted of thirty gigantic upright stones capped with a continuous ring of
horizontal stones. Weighing some 50 tons each, the stones were quarried
many miles away, hauled to the site, and laboriously shaped by blows from
stone hammers until they fit together.
Many theories have been advanced about why Stonehenge was built and
what purpose it served. In the 20th century it was discovered that Stonehenge
is oriented to the movements of the sun, and one American astronomer went
so far as to propose that the monument served as a sort of calendar, measuring
out the year and even predicting eclipses. Most experts remain skeptical of such
elaborate theories. It seems likely that the site was used as a setting for public
rituals or ceremonies, but beyond that nothing is certain. Perhaps, as Caro suggests, Stonehenge can do no more than stand as an example of how old and
how basic is our urge to create meaningful order and form, to structure our
world so that it reflects our ideas. This is another place where art begins.
Stonehenge was erected in the Neolithic era, or New Stone Age. The Neolithic era is named for the new kinds of stone tools that were invented, but it
also saw such important advances as the domestication of animals and crops
and the development of the technology of pottery, as people discovered that
fire could harden certain kinds of clay. With pottery, storage jars, food bowls,
and all sorts of other practical objects came into being. Yet much of the
world’s oldest pottery seems to go far beyond purely practical needs (1.5). This
elegant stemmed cup was formed around 2000 B.C.E. in what is now eastern
China. Eggshell-thin and exceedingly fragile, it could not have held much of
anything and would have tipped over easily. In other words, it isn’t practical.
Instead, great care and skill have gone into making it pleasing to the eye. Here
is a third place we might turn to for the origins of art—the urge to explore the
aesthetic possibilities of new technologies. What are the limits of clay, the
early potters must have wondered. What can be done with it? Scholars believe
such vessels were created for ceremonial use. They were probably made in
limited quantity for members of a social elite.
To construct meaningful images and forms, to create order and structure, to explore aesthetic possibilities—these characteristics seem to be part
of our nature as human beings. From them, art has grown, nurtured by each
culture in its own way.
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WHAT DO ARTISTS DO?
In our society we tend to think of art as something created by specialists, people we call artists, just as medicine is practiced by doctors and bridges are
designed by engineers. In other societies, virtually everyone contributes to art
in some way. Yet no matter how a society organizes itself, it calls on its artmakers to fulfill similar roles.
First, artists create places for some human purpose. Stonehenge, for example, was probably created as a place where a community could gather for
rituals. Closer to our own time, Maya Lin created the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial as a place for contemplation and remembrance (1.6). One of our
most painful national memories, the Vietnam War saw thousands of young
men and women lose their lives in a distant conflict that was increasingly
questioned and protested at home. By the war’s end, the nation was so bitterly
divided that returning veterans received virtually no recognition for their services. In this atmosphere of continuing controversy, Lin’s task was to create a
memorial that honored the human sacrifice of the war while neither glorifying nor condemning the war itself.
At the heart of the memorial is a long, tapering, V-shaped wall of black
granite, inscribed with the names of the missing, the captured, and the dead—
some 58,000 names in all. Set into the earth exposed by slicing a great wedge
from a gently sloping hill, it suggests perhaps a modern entrance to an ancient
burial mound, though in fact there is no entrance. Instead, the highly polished
surface acts as a mirror, reflecting the surrounding trees, the nearby Washington Monument, and the visitors themselves as they pass by.
Entering along a walkway from either end, visitors are barely aware at
first of the low wall at their feet. The monument begins just as the war itself
did, almost unnoticed, a few support troops sent to a small and distant country, a few deaths in the nightly news. As visitors continue their descent along
the downward-sloping path, the wall grows taller and taller until it towers
overhead, names upon names upon names. Often people reach out to touch
the letters, and as they do, they touch their own reflections reaching back. At
the walkway’s lowest point, with the wall at its highest, a corner is turned. The
path begins to climb upward, and the wall begins to fall away. Drawn by a
view of either the Washington Monument (as in the photograph here) or the
Lincoln Memorial (along the other axis), visitors leave the war behind.
In a quiet, unobtrusive way, the place that Maya Lin created encourages
a kind of ritual, a journey downward into a valley of death, then upward toward hope, healing, and reconciliation. Like Stonehenge, it has served to bring
a community together.
1.6 Maya Lin. Vietnam Veterans
Memorial, Washington, D.C.
1982. Black granite, length 492'.
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A RT I S T S
MAYA LIN
b. 1959
“E
works originates from a simple desire to make people aware of their surroundings, not just the physical world but also the
psychological world we live in,” Maya Lin has written.
“I create places in which to think, without trying to
dictate what to think.”3
The most famous of Maya Lin’s places for
thought was also her first, the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial in Washington, D.C. Lin created the design
in response to an open call for proposals for the memorial, and it was selected unanimously from the
more than 14,000 entries that flooded in. We can
imagine the judges’ surprise when they dialed the winner’s telephone number and found themselves connected to a dormitory at Yale University, where Lin
was a twenty-two-year-old undergraduate student in
architecture. Like much of Lin’s work, the memorial’s
powerful form was the product of a long period of
reading and thinking followed by a moment of intuition. On a trip to Washington to look at the site, she
writes, “I had a simple impulse to cut into the earth. I
imagined taking a knife and cutting into the earth,
opening it up, an initial violence and pain that in time
would heal. The grass would grow back, but the initial
8
ACH OF MY
cut would remain a pure flat surface in the earth with
a polished, mirrored surface, much like the surface on
a geode when you cut it and polish the edge.” Engraved with the names of the dead, the surface “would
be an interface, between our world and the quieter,
darker, more peaceful world beyond. . . . I never
looked at the memorial as a wall, an object, but as an
edge to the earth, an opened side.” Back at school, Lin
gave her idea form in the university dining hall with
two decisive cuts in a mound of mashed potatoes.
Maya Lin was born and grew up in Athens, Ohio.
Her father, a ceramist, was chair of the fine arts department at the Ohio University, while her mother, a
poet, taught in the department of English there. Both
parents had immigrated to the United States from
China before Maya was born. Lin readily credits the
academic atmosphere and her family’s everyday involvement with art for the direction her life has taken.
Of her father, she writes simply that “his aesthetic sensibility ran throughout our lives.” She and her brother
spent countless hours after school watching him work
with clay in his studio.
Lin admits that it took a long time to put the experience of constructing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial behind her. While the design had initially met with
widespread public approval, it soon sparked an angry
backlash that led to verbal, sometimes racist, attacks
on her personally. They took a toll. For the next several
years she worked quietly for an architectural firm before returning to Yale to finish her doctoral studies.
Since setting up her studio in 1987, she has created
such compelling works as the Civil Rights Memorial in
Montgomery, Alabama; Wave Field, an earthwork at
the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and the
Langston Hughes Library in Clinton, Tennessee.
Critics are often puzzled about whether to classify Lin as an architect or a sculptor. Lin herself insists that one flows into the other. “The best advice I
was given was from Frank Gehry (the only architect
who has successfully merged sculpture and architecture), who said I shouldn’t worry about the distinctions and just make the work,” Lin recalls. That is just
what she continues to do.
Maya Lin with a model of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1980.
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A second task artists perform is to create extraordinary versions of ordinary
objects. Just as the Neolithic vessel we looked at earlier is more than an ordinary drinking cup, so the textile here is more than an ordinary garment (1.7).
Woven in West Africa by artists of the Asante people, it is a spectacular example of a type of textile known as kente. Kente is woven in hundreds of patterns,
each with its own name, history, and symbolism. Traditionally, a newly invented pattern was shown first to the king, who had the right to claim it for his
own exclusive use. Like the Neolithic vessel, royal kente was reserved for ceremonial occasions. Rich, costly, and elaborate, the cloth distinguished its wearer
as special as well, an extraordinary version of an ordinary human being.
A third important tasks for artists has been to record and commemorate.
Artists create images that help us remember the present after it slips into the
past, that keep us in mind of our history, and that will speak of our times to
the future. Illustrated here is a painting by a 17th-century artist named
Manohar, one of several painters employed in the royal workshops of the emperor Jahangir, a ruler of the Mughal dynasty in India (1.8). At the center of
the painting we see Jahangir himself, seated beneath a sumptuous canopy. His
son Khusrau, dressed in a yellow robe, offers him the precious gift of a golden
cup. The painting commemorates a moment of reconciliation between father
and son, who had had a violent falling out. The moment did not last, however.
Khusrau would soon stage an armed rebellion that cost him the throne. While
the intricate details of Mughal history may be lost on us today, this enchanting painting gives us a vivid glimpse into their vanished world as they wanted
it to be remembered.
1.7 (left) Kente cloth, from
Ghana. Asante, mid-20th century.
Cotton, 6'51⁄4" 45".
The Newark Museum, New Jersey.
1.8 (right) Manohar. Jahangir
Receives a Cup from Khusrau.
1605–06. Opaque watercolor on
paper, 83⁄16 6".
British Museum, London.
W H AT D O A RT I S T S D O ? •
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1.9 (above) Shiva Nataraja. India,
10th century C.E. Bronze, height
5'1⁄4".
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
1.10 (below) Vincent van Gogh.
The Starry Night. 1889. Oil on
canvas, 29 361⁄4".
The Museum of Modern Art, New
York.
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A fourth task for artists is to give tangible form to the unknown. They portray what cannot be seen with the eyes or events that can only be imagined.
An anonymous Indian sculptor of the 10th century gave tangible form to the
Hindu god Shiva in his guise as Nataraja, Lord of the Dance (1.9). Encircled
by flames, his long hair flying outward, Shiva dances the destruction and rebirth of the world, the end of one cycle of time and the beginning of another.
The figure’s four arms communicate the complexity of this cosmic moment. In
one hand, Shiva holds the small drum whose beat summons up creation; in
another hand, he holds the flame of destruction. A third hand points at his
raised foot, beneath which worshipers may seek refuge, while a fourth hand is
raised with its palm toward the viewer, a gesture that means “fear not.”
A fifth function artists perform is to give tangible form to feelings and
ideas. The statue of Shiva we just looked at, for example, gives tangible form
to ideas about the cyclical nature of time that are part of the religious culture
of Hinduism. In The Starry Night (1.10) Vincent van Gogh labored to express
his personal feelings as he stood on the outskirts of a small village in France
and looked up at the night sky. Van Gogh had become intrigued by the belief
that people journeyed to a star after their death, and that there they continued
their lives. “Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen,” he wrote in
a letter, “we take death to reach a star.”4 Seen through the prism of this idea,
the night landscape inspired in him a vision of great intensity. Surrounded by
halos of radiating light, the stars have an exaggerated, urgent presence, as
though each one were a brilliant sun. A great wave or whirlpool rolls across
the sky—a cloud, perhaps, or some kind of cosmic energy. The landscape, too,
seems to roll on in waves like an ocean. A tree in the foreground writhes upward toward the stars as though answering their call. In the distance, a church
spire points upward as well. Everything is in turbulent motion. Nature seems
alive, communicating in its own language while the village sleeps.
Finally, artists refresh our vision and help us see the world in new ways.
Habit dulls our senses. What we see every day we no longer marvel at, because
it has become familiar. Through art we can see the world through someone
else’s eyes and recover the intensity of looking for the first time. Ernst Haas’
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A RT I S T S
VINCENT VAN GOGH
1853–1890
T
Van Gogh for today’s art lovers is easy
to understand. A painfully disturbed, tormented
man who, in spite of his great anguish, managed to
create extraordinary art. An intensely private, introspective man who wrote eloquently about art and
about life. An erratic, impulsive man who had the selfdiscipline to construct an enormous body of work in
a career that lasted only a decade.
Vincent van Gogh was born in the town of GrootZundert, in Holland, the son of a Dutch Protestant
minister. His early life was spent in various roles, including those of theological student and lay preacher
among the miners of the region. Not until the age of
twenty-seven did he begin to take a serious interest in
art, and then he had but ten years to live. In 1886 he
went to stay in Paris with his brother, Theo, an art
dealer who was always his closest emotional connection. In Paris Vincent became aware of the new art
HE APPEAL OF
movements and incorporated aspects of them into his
own style, especially by introducing light, brilliant
colors into his palette.
Two years later Van Gogh left Paris for the southern city of Arles. There he was joined briefly by the
painter Paul Gauguin, with whom Van Gogh hoped to
work closely, creating perfect art in a pure atmosphere of self-expression. However, the two artists
quarreled, and, apparently in the aftermath of one intense argument, Van Gogh cut off a portion of his ear
and had it delivered to a prostitute.
Soon after that bizarre incident, Van Gogh realized that his instability had gotten out of hand, and he
committed himself to an asylum, where—true to
form—he continued to work prolifically at his painting. Most of the work we admire so much was done in
the last two and a half years of his life. Vincent (as he
always signed himself) received much sympathetic
encouragement during those years, both from his
brother and from an unusually perceptive doctor and
art connoisseur, Dr. Gachet, whom he painted several
times. Nevertheless, his despair deepened, and in July
of 1890 he shot himself to death.
Vincent’s letters to his brother Theo represent a
unique document in the history of art. They reveal a
sensitive, intelligent artist pouring out his thoughts to
one especially capable of understanding. In 1883,
while still in Holland, he wrote to Theo: “In my opinion, I am often rich as Croesus, not in money, but
(though it doesn’t happen every day) rich, because I
have found in my work something to which I can devote myself heart and soul, and which gives inspiration and significance to life. Of course my moods vary,
but there is an average of serenity. I have a sure faith
in art, a sure confidence that it is a powerful stream,
which bears a man to harbour, though he himself
must do his bit too; and at all events I think it such a
great blessing, when a man has found his work, that I
cannot count myself among the unfortunate. I mean,
I may be in certain relatively great difficulties, and
there may be gloomy days in my life, but I shouldn’t
want to be counted among the unfortunate nor would
it be correct.”5
Vincent van Gogh. Self-Portrait. 1889.
Oil on canvas, 251⁄2 x 211⁄2".
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
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1.11 Ernst Haas. Peeling Paint on
Iron Bench, Kyoto, 1981. 1981.
Kodachrome print.
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photograph Peeling Paint on Iron Bench, Kyoto, 1981 (1.11) singles out a small
detail of an ordinary day and asks us to notice how rich it is if we really take
the time to look. Rain has made the colors shine with fresh intensity, brilliant
red against deep black, and the star-shaped leaves could almost be made of
gold. After seeing through Haas’ eyes, we may find ourselves—if only for a few
hours—more attentive to the world around us, which is stranger, more mysterious, more various, and more beautiful than we usually realize.
CREATING AND CREATIVITY
Out walking on a rainy day in Kyoto, Ernst Haas could have noticed the park
bench, smiled with pleasure, and continued on his way. Standing in a field
over a century ago, Van Gogh could have had his vision of the night sky, then
returned to his lodgings—and we would never have known about it. We all experience the moments of insight that put us where art begins. For most of us,
such moments are an end in themselves. For artists, they are a beginning, a
kind of raw material that sets a creative process in motion.
Creativity is a word that comes up often when talking about art, but what
is creativity exactly? Are we born with it? Can it be learned? Can it be lost? Are
artists more creative than other people? If so, how did they get that way?
Many writers and educators have tried to analyze creativity and determine
what makes a person creative.6 While the exact nature of creativity remains
elusive, there is general agreement that creative people tend to possess certain
traits, including:
• Sensitivity—heightened awareness of what one sees, hears, and touches, as
well as responsiveness to other people and their feelings.
• Flexibility—an ability to adapt to new situations and to see their
possibilities; willingness to find innovative relationships.
• Originality—uncommon responses to situations and to solving problems.
• Playfulness—a sense of humor and an ability to experiment freely.
• Productivity—the ability to generate ideas easily and frequently, and to
follow through on those ideas.
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• Fluency—a readiness to allow the free flow of ideas.
• Analytical skill—a talent for exploring problems, taking them apart, and
finding out how things work.
• Organizational skill—ability to put things back together in a coherent order.
We might bear this list in mind as we look at Tim Hawkinson’s Emoter
(1.12). Like many of Hawkinson’s works, Emoter looks like a do-it-yourself science project that has gotten a little out of hand. The stepladder on the floor
houses a black-and-white television monitor tuned to a local broadcast station.
Rows of light sensors attached to the monitor’s screen react to changes in the
moving image, sending signals through a tangle of cords, cables, and wires up
to a large photograph of the artist’s face. The components of the face—eyes,
nostrils, eyebrows, and mouth—move continuously in response to the signals
they receive, generating expressions that are as extravagant as a mime’s.
Certainly sensitivity made Hawkinson a keen observer of faces, and originality suggested to him that such unlikely material as laboratory experiments
monitoring brain waves, or antiquated scientific theories linking specific facial
expressions to specific emotions, could inspire a work of art. Playfulness, flexibility, fluency, and productivity set him to exploring ways in which his project could be given form, while analytical and organizational skills allowed him
to carry it to completion.
The profession of artist is not the only one that requires creativity. Scientists, mathematicians, teachers, business executives, doctors, librarians,
computer programmers—people in every line of work, if they are any good,
look for ways to be creative. Artists occupy a special place in that they have
devoted their lives to opening the channels of visual creativity.
Can a person become more creative? Almost certainly, if one allows oneself to be. Being creative means learning to trust one’s own interests, experiences, and references, and to use them to enhance life and work. Above all, it
means discarding rigid notions of what has been or should be in favor of what
could be. Creativity develops when the eyes and the mind are wide open, and
it is as important to looking at art as it is to making it.
We close this chapter by exploring what looking creatively might involve.
1.12 Tim Hawkinson. Emoter.
2002. Installation (left) and detail
(right). Altered ink-jet print on
plastic and foam core on panel,
monitor, stepladder, and
mechanical components; print:
49 36 4"; stepladder height
27".
Courtesy Ace Gallery, Los Angeles.
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LOOKING AND RESPONDING
Science tells us that seeing is a mode of perception, which is the recognition
and interpretation of sensory data—in other words, how information comes
in our eyes (ears, nose, taste buds, fingertips) and what we make of it. In visual perception our eyes take in information in the form of light patterns; the
brain processes these patterns to give them meaning. The role of the eyes in
vision is purely mechanical. Barring some physical disorder, it functions the
same way for everyone. The mind’s role in making sense of the information,
however, is highly subjective and belongs to the realm of psychology. Simply
put, given the same situation, we do not all notice the same things, nor do we
interpret what we see in the same way.
One reason for differences in perception is the immense amount of detail available for our attention at any given moment. To navigate efficiently
through daily life, we practice what is called selective perception, focusing on
the visual information we need for the task at hand and relegating everything
else to the background. But other factors are in play as well. Our mood influences what we notice and how we interpret it, as does the whole of our prior
experience—the culture we grew up in, relationships we have had, places we
have seen, knowledge we have accumulated.
The subjective nature of perception explains why a work of art may mean
different things to different people and how it is that we may return to a favorite work again and again, noticing new aspects of it each time. It explains
why the more we know, the richer each new encounter with art will be, for
we will have more experience to bring to it. It explains why we should make
every effort to experience as much art in person as possible, for physical dimensions also influence perception. The works reproduced in this book are
miniaturized. Many other details escape reproduction as well.
Above all, the nature of perception suggests that the most important key
to looking at art is to become aware of the process of looking itself—to notice
details and visual relationships, to explore the associations and feelings they
inspire, to search for knowledge we can bring to bear, and to try to put what
we see into words. A quick glance at Juan de Valdés Leal’s Vanitas (1.13) reveals a careless jumble of objects with a cherub looking over them. In the
background, a man looks out at us from the shadows. But what are the objects? And what are the cherub and the man doing? Only if we begin to ask
and answer such questions does the message of the painting emerge.
In the foreground to the left is a timepiece. Next to it are two flowers: one
in full bloom, the other already dying. Then come dice and playing cards, suggesting games of chance. Further on, a cascade of medals, money, and jewelry
leads up to an elaborate crown, suggesting honors, wealth, and power. At the
center, books and scientific instruments evoke knowledge. Finally, back where
we began, a skull crowned with a laurel wreath lies on its side. Laurel traditionally crowns those who have become famous through their achievements,
especially artistic achievements.
Over this display the cherub blows a bubble, as though making a comment on the riches before him. A bubble’s existence is even shorter than a
flower’s—a few seconds of iridescent beauty, and then nothing. Behind the
books, a crystal globe resembles a bubble as well, encouraging us to see a connection. When we meet the man’s gaze, we notice that he has drawn back a
heavy curtain with one hand and is pointing at a painting he has thus revealed
with the other. “Look at this,” he all but speaks. The painting depicts the Last
Judgment. In Christian belief, the Last Judgment is the moment when Christ
will appear again. He will judge both the living and the dead, accepting some
into Paradise and condemning others to Hell. The universe will end, and with
it time itself.
We might paraphrase the basic message of the painting something like
this: “Life is fleeting, and everything that we prize and strive for during it is ul14
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timately meaningless. Neither wealth nor beauty nor good fortune nor power
nor knowledge nor fame will save us when we stand before God at the end of
the world.” Without taking the time to perceive and reflect on the many details
of the image, we would miss its message completely.
Vanitas is Latin for “vanity.” It alludes to the biblical book of Ecclesiastes,
a meditation on the fleeting nature of earthly life and happiness in which
we read that in the end, “all is vanity.” The title wasn’t invented or bestowed
by the artist, however. Rather, it is a generic name for a subject that was popular during his lifetime. Numerous vanitas paintings have come down to us
from the 17th century, and together they show the many ways that artists
treated its themes.
Closer to our own time, the painter Audrey Flack became fascinated by
the vanitas tradition, and she created a series of her own, including Wheel of
Fortune (Vanitas) (1.14). Knowing something of the tradition Flack is building on, we can more easily appreciate her updated interpretation. As ever, a
skull puts us in mind of death. An hourglass, a calendar page, and a guttering
candle speak of time and its passing. The necklace, mirrors, powder puff, and
lipstick are contemporary symbols of personal vanity, while a die and a tarot
card evoke the roles of chance and fate in our lives. As in the painting by
Valdés, a visual echo encourages us to think about a connection, in this case
between the framed oval photograph of a young woman and the framed oval
reflection of the skull just below.
Flack may be painting with one eye on the past, but the other is firmly on
our society as we are now. For example, she includes modern inventions such
as a photograph and a lipstick tube, and she shuns symbols that no longer
speak to us directly such as laurels and a crown. The specifically Christian
context is gone as well, resulting in a more general message that applies to us
all, regardless of faith: Time passes quickly, beauty fades, chance plays a bigger role in our lives than we like to think, death awaits.
Despite their differences, both Flack and Valdés provide us with many
clues to direct our thoughts. They depict objects that have common associations and then trust us to add up the evidence. At first glance, a contemporary
1.13 (left) Juan de Valdés Leal.
Vanitas. 1660. Oil on canvas,
513⁄8 391⁄16".
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford.
1.14 (right) Audrey Flack. Wheel
of Fortune (Vanitas). 1977–78. Oil
over acrylic on canvas, 8 8'.
Collection Louis K. Meisel Gallery,
New York.
LOOKING AND RESPONDING •
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1.15 Jim Hodges. Every Touch.
1997. Silk flowers, thread;
16 14'.
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
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work such as Jim Hodges’ Every Touch seems very different (1.15). Every
Touch is made of artificial silk flowers, taken apart petal by petal. The petals
were ironed flat, intermingled, then stitched together to form a large curtain
or veil. Yet while Every Touch may not direct our thoughts as firmly as the
other works, we approach it in the same way. We look, and we try to become
aware of our looking. We ask questions and explore associations. We bring our
experience and knowledge to bear. We interrogate our feelings.
We might think of spring. We might be put in mind of other art, such as
the flowered backgrounds of medieval tapestries (see 12.13) or the role of flowers in the vanitas tradition. We might think about flowers and the occasions
on which we offer them. We might think about the flowers we know from poetry, where they are often linked to beauty and youth, for all three fade
quickly. We might think about petals, which fall from dying flowers. We might
think about veils and when we wear them, such as at weddings and funerals.
We might notice how delicately the work is stitched together and how fragile
it seems. We might think about looking not only at it but also through it, and
about how a curtain separates one realm from another. The man in Valdés’
painting, for example, draws back a curtain to reveal the future.
Every Touch is not as easily put into words as the vanitas paintings, but
it can inspire thoughts about many of the same ideas: seasons that come and
go, how beauty and sadness are intertwined, the ceremonies that mark life’s
passing, the idea of one realm opening onto another, the fragility of things. In
the end, what we see in Every Touch depends on what we bring to it, and if we
approach the task sincerely, there are no wrong answers.
Every Touch will never mean for any of us exactly what it means for
Hodges, nor should it. An artist’s work grows from a lifetime of experiences,
thoughts, and emotions; no one else can duplicate them exactly. Works of
art hold many meanings. The greatest of them seem to speak anew to each
generation and to each attentive observer. The most important thing is that
some works of art come to mean something for you, that your own experiences, thoughts, and emotions find a place in them, for then you will have
made them live.
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T H I N K I N G A B O U T A RT
WHO BUYS IT?
A
RT COLLECTORS ARE rich. Art collectors are glamorous. Art collectors are members of the upper
classes or the nobility, or else they are important business leaders. Everybody knows these facts, but apparently nobody bothered to inform Dorothy and Herbert
Vogel of New York City. The Vogels—she a retired librarian, he a retired postal worker—are not rich, and
their lifestyle is modest. They are the sort of people
one can’t help but call “ordinary.” One fact about the
Vogels is undeniably extraordinary: They have been
collecting art on an ambitious scale for more than
thirty-five years.
Everybody in the fashionable art world of New
York, it seems, knows the unfashionable Herbert and
Dorothy. The Vogels attend as many openings as possible, they regularly visit several artists’ studios, they
study the art seriously—and they buy. Their small
Manhattan apartment eventually became crammed to
the ceilings with some seventeen hundred original
works of art, emphasizing Minimal, Conceptual, and
Postmodern artists. This collection was acquired almost entirely on Herbert’s salary from the post office.
Dorothy’s income pays the couple’s living expenses.
The odds against two such . . . well . . . ordinary
people becoming important art collectors seem formidable. Herbert, the son of a tailor, grew up in New
York and started working for the post office after high
school and the army. Dorothy, born in Elmira, New
York, earned a master’s degree in library science and
took a librarian’s job in Brooklyn. The couple met at a
singles’ party, dated for a year, then married in 1962.
Their plunge into the art world was led by Herbert,
who had taken some art courses at New York University, had made friends with young artists, and aspired
to become an artist himself. Soon Herbert got
Dorothy involved, and the two decided collecting
would be more to their taste.
The Vogels began slowly. Rushing from their respective jobs in the evening, they would rendezvous in
a subway station, then go off to a gallery to study the
art and consider possible purchases. At first, dealers
and gallery habitués wondered, “Who on earth
are those people?” The Vogels do not look like one’s
usual image of collectors. Soon, however, their informed and persistent buying attracted attention;
soon their appearance in a gallery created a stir. As
their collection grew, so did their reputation. Artists
accept them as friends because their love of the work
is so sincere.
No doubt an important factor in the Vogels’ success has been their single-mindedness. Dorothy and
Herbert have no children, though they have turtles,
fish, and cats in quantity. Nearly all their time is devoted to the collection. They are shrewd buyers,
stretching their limited budget to the utmost.
The value of the Vogels’ collection was demonstrated in 1992, when the National Gallery of Art in
Washington announced it would acquire the collection as part purchase, part donation. Once the art was
moved out for inventory, the Vogels had their apartment painted for the first time in decades—and went
back to buying art.
Most people pretty much live out the lives they
were born to, but Herbert and Dorothy Vogel obviously are made of stronger stuff. The postal worker
and the librarian—together they invented a special
life for themselves, a life with art. Seeing them, talking with them, one cannot doubt they are enjoying
every moment of it.
Collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel at the exhibition “From
Minimal to Conceptual Art: Works from the Dorothy and Herbert
Vogel Collection,” at the National Gallery of Art, May 29 through
November 27, 1994.
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